Arlington, Virginia
-- I should confess right now that I am a time traveler. Not in the sense
of H.G. Wells and other science fiction writers, though I am a big fan of
H.G. Wells, Isaac Asimov, James Blish, Harlan Ellison, Robert
Heinlein, and many other authors of that
genre. In addition to science fiction, I started at a rather young age reading
military history
-- the stories of battles, campaigns, wars, generals -- mankind
at war.

This was when I began to travel through time. As I grew
older, pursued a career, and traveled, I began to visit locations about which I
read. As I walked across battlefields or through ancient city streets, I tried to
see them as they were, to pierce the curtain of what is there now. Sometimes it
almost works.

More than a decade ago, I toured Moscow with a local expert
on the Napoleonic wars in Russia and venues in that city visited by the French
emperor during his brief residence there. As we followed the footsteps of the
first French troops up the Arbat toward the Kremlin, we paused at Arbatsky
Ploschad/Arbat Square, where my guide said the French finally had sight of the
gates to the Kremlin itself. As Russians fired upon them from those gates, the
French set up their artillery right at this same spot and began firing at those
Russians to drive them away. I could hear the wooden axles of the gun carriages
and caissons squeaking out in their need for grease, the creaking leather
harnesses, and the jingling sound of the metal chains that held many of these
pieces together.

My interest in Ireland actually began to really develop, as
I suspect it did for many, from hearing the music of The Clancy Brothers. I was
fascinated by the stories told in the songs they sang and tried to learn the
history behind them (to the possible despair of my mother’s Scots-Irish
ancestors, buried in County Tyrone).

Eventually, I would be able to visit many of these locations
-- Toomb Bridge, Antrim Town, Vinegar Hill, and such. One of the most
interesting was the field at Ballinamuck, County Longford, where Jean Joseph Humbert
surrendered his French troops to the Lieutenant-Governor of Ireland, Lord
Cornwallis. This came after I had visited Yorktown, Virginia, where Cornwallis
surrendered his army -- by proxy -- to George Washington, and before my
subsequent visit to the battlefield south of New Orleans, where Cornwallis’
aide at Ballinamuck, Pakenham, would be killed under the gaze of Jean Paul
Humbert -- by then a resident of New Orleans and unofficial aide and adviser to
General Andrew Jackson. An historical trifecta!

But, for many years, Dublin held less interest for me (as did the American Civil War until I became a Civil War reenactor in 2000), and remained merely another waypoint on visits to
other points in Ireland. So why change
now? In part, the calendar has prompted my reassessment. I’ve done a lot of
reading in the past year or more, much of which I’ll discuss here, which has
definitely increased my interest.

Robert Mosher dressed for thelooming War of Independence

As a military historian who has walked many battlefields,
the streets of Dublin still offer one of the best opportunities to walk a
relatively unchanged urban battlefield (especially compared to Stalingrad or
Berlin). And the men and women of 1916, and their deeds, are an amazing mixture of romantic and realist; zealot and poet, and one might even say warrior and the priest.

So later this month I plan to be walking the streets of
Dublin looking for the footprints and the landscapes seen and left by those who fought in the 1916 Rising – and I will share that experience here as I plan, experience, and
reflect upon this journey. I hope you will join me, and The Wild Geese, “on the one road.” WG